Perchance to Dean
"Perchance to Dean" is the 42nd episode of The Venture Bros.. Plot Hank has been grounded for being rude to his father in front of guests. Meanwhile, Dean -- showing signs of a developing mustache -- appears to have become the golden child of the Venture family. Rusty rewards Dean for as yet unknown reasons with his own lab (based in the Venture compound's panic room), a chemistry set, and an introduction to his muse, which turns out to be Progressive Rock. But all is not well in the house of Venture. A deformed clone slug apparently survived an abortion attempt during Brock's first days at the Compound, and has been living in the attic ever since, growing more and more resentful of the blessed existence of Hank and Dean. He is attempting to gain the affection of Dr. Venture, or at least of an apparition of him, by constructing a suit out of the skins of the various iterations of Dean that have died over the years. The slug, codenamed D-19, needs just one more piece to complete his suit. An African American UPS delivery man delivers the explosives Sergeant Hatred has ordered so that he can booby trap the Venture compound with explosive Dr. Ventures. When Hank sees the delivery man he asks if he can hear his thoughts (a reference to 'The Shining') which Dr. Venture mocks him for. Venture then realizes that he had forgotten about Dean listening to his records and rushes to his rescue with Hatred. After reviving Dean with a tub of ice water, Dean shouts that he's had a break through and gets to work. While Hank is still doing chores Dermott shows up. When he sees that one of Hank's chores is to wash the car he suggests that they should go and give the car a reason for being washed. They go out and take it for a joyride through the Venture compound. Dermott comments that he wanted to hotwire the car, but Hank stopped him because Hank already had the keys. Meanwhile, D-19 is digging up the mass grave of dead Hank and Dean clones (where Brock has buried them all these years, greatly expanded after the slaughter in the season 3 finale) in order to get the last piece for his suit. While dragging Dean's corpse away, Hank drives up in the car and hits the already dead Dean clone. Thinking he's killed his brother he freaks out as Dermott eggs him on by telling him how horrible jail will be. The UPS delivery man, who apparently does have the Shining, receives a premonition and calls the cops to tell them that something horrible is going to happen at the Venture Compound. The police arrive and are creeped out by the explosive Dr. Venture statues which they think are real people who have been brainwashed. They send an officer in to scout the area who finds the mass grave of dead clones so the police prepare to raid the compound. Frustrated at his failure, D-19 goes back to his room and speaks to a hallucination of his father who reminds him that there is still one Dean left... the currently alive one. D-19 goes down to the kitchen to collect a weapon and knocks out Sergeant Hatred. When Dean rushes in to check on his experiment (which he had left in the oven) D-19 attacks. Dean, believing that he accidentally created D-19 with his experiment to regrow his hair, flees and the two accidentally set Dean's lab in the panic room on fire. Sensing the fire, the automated system drops Dr. Venture towards the panic room, but he manages to stop himself from falling into the flames. The sprinkler system awakens Hatred who goes to help when the police raid begins. Hank, thinking that the police have come for him, realizes that he has to flee. After Dermott says he can't take the car, since it was the murder weapon, he decides to take the people mover from "The Buddy System." The police arrest Dr. Venture and Hatred. As Hank and Dermott flee past them in the people mover, they give chase. Meanwhile, Dean is still running from D-19. He manages to collect his hover boots and tries to use them to flee, but D-19 grabs onto him and they rocket together into the air. While passing a trailer park, Dermott tells Hank to stop and gets out of the people mover. He tells Hank that he can't go with him to Mexico, he has a curfew, but he gives Hank a roll of bills. Hank continues on, the police still chasing him. Dean and D-19 have crashed back onto the Venture Compound grounds. When D-19 goes to attack Dean again, he's stopped by the hallucination of the father who tells him that he never needed the Dean suit, he just needed a father's love. The hallucination tells D-19 to hug him and when he does, he explodes. The hallucination was actually one of the explosive Dr. Venture statues. Witnessing the explosion from the front doors, the real Dr. Venture wonders who that person (D-19) was. After the credits, Hank is seen relaxing on the beach and sipping a drink while tropical music plays. This is quickly interrupted by Dr. Venture, it was a fantasy brought on by listening to one of Hatred's records in the egg chair, who blames him for all the episode's troubles including the things that Dean actually did. Connections to Previous Episodes *Dermott is revealed to live in trailer park in the hills above the Venture Compound, where he lives with his mother (who is apparently voiced using re-used audio of her last appearance). Given that Dermott has previously been shown hanging around at the Venture Compound, it is logical that he lives relatively nearby. *Dermott also mentions when he fought Dean, claiming that Dean got lucky when Dermott got beat up by the Venture twin (The Buddy System) *When Hatred mentions that anything they find on his hard drive is "100% computer generated" is another reference to his attraction to young boys. As possessing computer generated child pornography is still considered legal as the models are of legal age altered to look younger. *When D-19 jumps to avoid being run over by Hank, he yells, "Super runaway!" which Dean typically cries when scared. *The Hat Hank wears at the end is the same hat he bought in the first episode. Cultural References *The title is a reference to a line from William Shakespeare's tragedy, Hamlet, in which the hero compares dying to drifting into a dreamy slumber: "To sleep, perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub". Notably, in the episode Dean undergoes several dreams and lapses into a death-like coma which Dr. Venture awakens him from; additionally, the clone of Dean suffers a similar situation to Hamlet himself, being told by a hallucination of his father to kill what he sees as an usurper. *In the scene where Dr. Venture shows Brock the clone lab, their clothes and hair styles indicate that the action is taking place at some point in the late 1980s or early 1990s. *The suit made of Dean skins is a reference to The Silence of the Lambs, in which the villain makes a suit out of the skins of the women he murders. *Dr. Venture tells Dean that he'd usually introduce Dean to Progressive Rock with something more accessible like Asia. *The album "with the face" Dr. Venture warns Dean about is King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King. *Dr. Venture reveals Dean was named in honor of renowned album cover artist Roger Dean, whom Rusty cites as the, "greatest artist of our Generation." *When Dean first begins listening to prog rock, his hallucinations begin with a reference to Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, transition into an homage to the film Heavy Metal, then end with a sequence similar to the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. *Dr. Venture warns Dean not to air drum along to the Yes album he is listening to; lest his wrists snap trying to keep up with the constant rhythmic shifts of drummer Bill Bruford. Dean is seen later grabbing his wrists in pain when attempting to air drum. *When Dean overdoses on prog rock, Dr. Venture finds him listening to the second side of Dark Side of the Moon and says he's in a "Floyd hole", a reference to "K-hole", a term used to describe the effects of a large dose of ketamine. *Dr. Venture revives Dean from his "Floyd hole" by dumping him in a bath full of ice water. This may be a reference to a similar scene in the movie Jacob's Ladder. Upon regaining consciousness, Dean exclaims "Eureka!" which is a reference to the well known anecdote of the Golden Crown, in which Archimedes, while in a bath, discovers how to use water to measure density, and upon his discovery, also exclaims "Eureka!" *While arguing with his father in the bathroom, as the shot pans through the ventilation pipe, Hank can be heard shouting, "Attica! Attica!" This is a reference to Dog Day Afternoon, in which the character played by Al Pacino uses the same cry against police brutality (the chant itself references the Attica prison riot.) *Hank mentions Bill Nye the Science Guy when declaring he doesn't know where to find any hydrochloric acid to burn his fingerprints off "like in Fight Club." Dermott claims that he snuck into the theater to watch Fight Club, which seems unlikely since Fight Club was released in 1999 and Dermott would have been a small child at the time; however, he mentions that he was originally taken to see Elmo in Grouchland, a far more child-friendly film, by his mother. *When the police further investigate the Venture compound, the sheriff's presumptions lead him to think whatever may be happening inside will be a repeat of the Waco siege of 1993. *Dermott gives Hank a roll of bills as he flees for Mexico, telling him to get him "some fireworks and spanish fly," which is a Mexican folk aphrodisiac. *The idea of a disfigured, failed clone observing Dean from a distance resembles the "Clone Saga" of the Spider-Man universe, where Kaine, the first Spider-clone created by the Jackal, watches his counterparts from afar. Dean resembles Peter Parker, and is often seen wearing Spider-Man themed pajamas in the episode. *D-19's attic room mimics a shot in Edward Scissorhands of the room where Edward lives in his abandoned mansion. Category:The Venture Bros. episodes